SBSP Case Neg-ADA Novice Packet-2019-20



SBSP Case Neg-ADA Novice Packet-2019-20SolvencyFails---1NCSBSP fails – economic, technical, and geographic barriers Matignon 19 (Louis de Gouyon Matignon, reporter. “THE LEGAL STATUS OF CHINESE SPACE-BASED SOLAR POWER STATIONS” --- April 15, 2019 --- accessed 8/13/19 --- ) ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Various SBSP proposals have been researched since the early 1970s, but none are economically viable with present-day space launch infrastructure. Some technologists speculate that this may change in the distant future if an off-world industrial base were to be developed that could manufacture solar power satellites out of asteroids or lunar material, or if radical new space launch technologies other than rocketry should become available in the future.? Besides the cost of implementing such a system, SBSP also introduces several technological hurdles, including the problem of transmitting energy from orbit to Earth’s surface for use. Since wires extending from Earth’s surface to an orbiting satellite are neither practical nor feasible with current technology, SBSP designs generally include the use of some manner of wireless power transmission with its concomitant conversion inefficiencies, as well as land use concerns for the necessary antenna stations to receive the energy at Earth’s surface. The collecting satellite would convert solar energy into electrical energy on board, powering a microwave transmitter or laser emitter, and transmit this energy to a collector on Earth’s surface.Fails---2NCSBSP is not technologically nor economically feasibleFan et. al 11 (William, Harold Martin, James Wu, Brian Mok, “SPACE BASED SOLAR POWER,” , 6/24/11, Accessed: 8/20/19) ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****While hard to estimate, we believe currently that SBSP is not feasible for the next 30 years. There must first be a large decrease in launch costs, and significant adoption of solar technology before SBSP would be a plausible large scale energy source. Efficiency levels are still not yet at a level where the large added cost of a space launch can justify SBSP. Furthermore, the difficulties in large scale wireless energy transmission is paramount, and have large scale demonstrations have not yet occurred over significant distances. We have also not yet seen a large boom in large scale wireless energy transmission that would allow us to project an efficiency trend for this technology. We conclude that it is still too early for SBSP, barring any large scale technological disruptions within the next 30 years. It’s not worth it – SBSP would fill just 0.1% of domestic energy needsSpencer 8 (Roy,?Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.?He?received?his Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin in 1981.?As Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center,?Dr. Spencer previously directed research into the development and application of?satellite passive microwave remote sensing techniques for measuring?global?temperature, water vapor, and precipitation. “Reality Deniers”, , 1/15/08, Accessed: 8/20/19) ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****And now the space-based solar power crowd has returned. These "experts" point to the increase in efficiency that could be achieved by putting solar collectors in Earth's orbit and beaming the energy down to the ground. And indeed you probably could get several times the amount of energy from a solar collector in space versus on the ground. Too bad it would be insanely expensive. You might have heard of the problems NASA has had with relatively tiny solar collectors attached to the Space Station and Space Telescope. Now imagine putting a one-square mile collector in space. Even if we could get such a thing designed, built, launched, and working, it would replace only 1 of the 1,000 one-gigawatt plants I mentioned earlier that the U.S. alone needs.Tech challenges overwhelm – we can’t launch, maintain, or efficiently extract energy from an SSP systemSpace Frontier Foundation 6 (“About Space-Based Solar Power,” 6/24/11, Accessed: 8/20/19) ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Space-based solar power also has three major drawbacks. First, despite fifty years of spacefaring experience, getting to space is still hard and expensive. It costs thousands of dollars per pound to lift anything into space from Earth. Second, we have no experience assembling and sustaining objects on orbit of the scale that space-based solar power will require. Some designs suggest systems that are literally several square kilometers in size. Finally, although the efficiencies of collecting power on orbit are many times greater than what can be done on the surface of the Earth, there are significant power losses in converting raw solar energy into electricity to feed a broadcast system on orbit, during transmission to Earth receivers, and from the receiver into terrestrial power grids. Some calculations suggest space solar power can deliver only ten percent of the original collected power. Cost---1NCSBSP makes zero economic senseChessen 17 (Matt Chessen is a career U.S. diplomat, technologist and author who currently leads the Office of the Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State. “Space-Based Solar Power: Fool’s Gold,” 5/25/17, accessed 8/16/19, , CP) ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****The United States would be foolish to pursue development of space-based solar power (SBSP). Peter Garretson argues for a significant investment in SBSP in his article “Solar Power in Space?” However, his arguments are ill-considered. The costs of SBSP are enormous, requiring tens of thousands of space launches to establish reasonable capacity. The SBSP concept entails a large, risky, long-term investment in a power source that could be obsolete when deployed. The sequencing is illogical, as development of space-based manufacturing is a necessary precursor to any economically viable, large-scale industrial deployment in space. And the policy justification is insufficient as there is no overriding national security context requiring a national investment on the scale of the Apollo Mission or Manhattan Project. SBSP would place a constellation of very large satellites into geosynchronous orbit where they would convert solar energy into microwaves that would be beamed back to airport-sized collecting stations on Earth. The potential benefits are appealing. Earth-based solar power must contend with night and weather while space based solar systems would receive sunlight 99% of the time. Once fully deployed, SPSB could provide nearly-unlimited, environmentally-friendly energy to any receiving point on Earth. That’s the optimist’s shiny vision. Beneath the glitter, SBSP has major issues. The costs of such a system are enormous. Each satellite would be kilometers long, weigh thousands of metric tons and require hundreds of launches to deploy its parts. Launch prices — currently ~$1200/kg at the low end — would need to decline to under $350/kg for even a reasonable R&D program. Even the most optimistic economic viability models require SBSP to service nearly 100% of Earth’s power needs. Garretson also ignores the fact that the technologies for assembling and maintaining a SBSP system — likely autonomous robots — do not yet exist. The financial costs are in the hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, for a full system. I believe the risk-reward balance is not favorable to make such an investment in SBSP. As I noted in my article “Peak Stuff” the combination of cheaper renewable energy and new sources of non-renewables means that we’ve probably hit peak oil demand. Clean energy investments already outnumber non-renewables 2:1. The costs for renewables will only fall further. Additionally, even SBSP optimists claim a deployable system is decades away. Why bet on a high-risk, high-cost potential energy source when we have emerging cheap, clean energy now? And better energy sources, like fusion or hydrogen power, might emerge in the near future,. SBSP is a very risky bet. Cost---2NCSBSP is not economically viableCaton 15 [Jeffrey L. Caton is President of Kepler Strategies, a veteran-owned small business specializing in national security, cyberspace theory, and aerospace technology. He is also an Intermittent Professor of Program Management with Defense Acquisition University. “SPACE-BASED SOLAR POWER: A TECHNICAL, ECONOMIC, AND OPERATIONAL ASSESSMENT,” Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press, April 2015, Accessed 8/19/19 ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Even with the potential for profitable niche markets, the magnitude of investment required is staggering. The total development cost based on European Space Agency (ESA) estimates of over $275 billion (see last entry in Table 1) is more than the market value of Walmart Stores ($247 billion) and well beyond the fiscal year 2015 budgets for NASA ($17.5 billion) and the Department of Energy ($27.9 billion).61 Further, the net present value (NPV) calculated on several SBSP systems yielded negative values: -$72 billion for a 1-GW system and -59 billion for a 5-GW system. The negative NPV values mean that the systems will subtract that value from the investor over the lifetime of the project.62 It is not clear that reducing the scope of the SBSP power generation to match needs of niche markets—for example, from 1-5-GW to 10-100-MW—would make the NPV calculations much better for investors, since many of the costs for research and development of the system components are the same.63 In any case, there will always be competitors in the renewable energy market—how do their values compare to those of SBSP systems?Costs could be up to 3.4 trillion dollarsNankivell 18 (Kirk Nankivell, Founder of futurology site, , and website manager of Singularity Hub. “Why the Future of Solar Power Is from Space” --- Dec 31, 2018 --- accessed 8/13/19 --- ) ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****There is always a catch. Some general safety issues were noted above, but the main impediment is related to the cost in sending all the materials required for the SBSP.? Current cost estimates to send roughly 1 kg of payload into space vary from $9,000 – $43,000 depending on the rocket and spacecraft utilized.? If we look at sending up solar panels alone, the low end of the spectrum for launch costs of an ultra-lightweight 4 MW SBSP system is 4,000 metric tons (per Wikipedia). However, estimates a SBSP to be more likely in the 80,000 metric ton range.? Low cost: 4,000 metric tons (4M kg) x $9,000 launch cost per kg = $36,000,000,000? High cost: 80,000 metric tons (80M kg) x $43,000 launch cost per kg = 3.44×1012 or $3,440,000,000,000? While these numbers are not totally accurate to state-of-the-art systems and are simply an estimate, we are still looking at a very rough low cost of $36 billion up to a slightly more expensive cost of $3.4 trillion. Utilizing a lunar or asteroid factory suddenly seems within budget.? Debris---1NCDebris destroys solar satsJakhu & Pelton 17 [Ram S. Jakhu, director of, and a tenured associate professor at, the Institute of Air and Space Law, McGill University, chair of the Management Board of the McGill Manual on International Law Applicable to Military Uses of Outer Space Project (MILAMOS), coordinator of the International Study on Global Space Governance, member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Space Security, fellow and chairman of the Legal and Regulatory Committee of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, managing editor of the Space Regulations Library series. Joseph N. Pelton, Ph.D., former Dean and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the International Space University, founder of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation, founding President of the Space and Satellite Professionals International (SSPI), Director Emeritus of the Space and Advanced Communications Research Institute (SACRI) at George Washington University. “Space-Based Solar Power,” Global Space Governance: An International Study, Ch. 9, Space and Society, Springer, 2017, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-54364-2 Accessed 8/6/19 ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****9.4.2.3 Space Debris SBSP is not bereft of all the challenges of the in situ space environment, including the threat from space debris (both manmade and natural). At least in the initial stage, and until the technology evolves into smaller but more efficient solar platforms, SBSP satellite systems are contemplated to have a large surface area, which makes them more vulnerable to a debris hit. This is coupled with the potential to create greater amount of debris in the event of an accident, since the SBSP system has more and larger moving parts [Jakhu, Howard & Harrington, 2016, p. 24]. Moreover, the 2011 IAA report noted that the “principal regime in which orbital debris is found is that of LEO … There are three aspects to this issue for SPS. The first issue is the potential impact of LEO debris on dedicated SPS infrastructure. The second issue is the potential production of LEO debris by SPS [Earth-to-orbit] and in-space transportation. Finally, the third issue is the potential interaction of GEO SPS inspace transportation with LEO debris” [Mankins & Kaya, 2011, p. 79]. Generally, space debris has long been a consideration of international space law and regulation. However, owing to lack of political will for stringent binding rules or treaty obligations, the problem continues to grow and is a constant cause for alarm both from the perspectives of regulation and use of outer space.Debris---2NCSBSP systems are vulnerable in a hostile space environment – radiation, debris, attacksCaton 15 [Jeffrey L. Caton is President of Kepler Strategies, a veteran-owned small business specializing in national security, cyberspace theory, and aerospace technology. He is also an Intermittent Professor of Program Management with Defense Acquisition University. “SPACE-BASED SOLAR POWER: A TECHNICAL, ECONOMIC, AND OPERATIONAL ASSESSMENT,” Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press, April 2015, Accessed 8/19/19 BBB] ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Is there a compelling national security requirement for SBSP systems? No such explicit mandate exists in U.S. capstone space strategy documents, nor is there any reasonable objective that implicitly points to such systems as having any priority in current plans. The National Security Space Strategy posits that “the current and future environment is driven by three trends—space is becoming increasingly congested, contested, and competitive.”80 The growth of Earth’s orbital population depicted in Figure 5 clearly shows the increasing congestion and its consequences, such as over 4,500 pieces of orbital debris resulting from a Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) test in 2007 and the collision of a Russian satellite with a U.S. commercial Iridium satellite in 2009. Even though the population has reduced somewhat since then due to the routine reentry of such debris, the July 2014 orbital population still stands at 16,900, of which only 3,812 objects are payloads.81 Any additional satellites operating in this environment will only exacerbate the risk of safe operations for all other satellites. So perhaps the compelling question for proposed SBSP systems is this: Do they have a mission unique enough to justify their operation in this environment? Or, perhaps, stated another way, are the capabilities and benefits provided by SBSP systems exclusive to space or can they be accomplished on the ground, albeit perhaps more inefficiently? Certain space missions, such as surveillance, weather observation, and navigation spacecraft must leverage the ultimate high ground of space. Like these satellites, SBSP systems would have to operate in the severe and dynamic environment of space radiation, charged particles, and planetary debris. They would also be vulnerable to physical, electromagnetic, and cyber attacks. Finally, any contemplated use of SBSP systems would have to address the reasonable concern regarding the perceived ability of such systems to be weaponized.Debris takes out SPS and causes cascading failuresAnzaldua 14 [Al Anzaldua, retired US State Department diplomat and 30-year veteran of space advocacy, National Space Society (NSS) International Chapters Coordinator, Vice-Chair and International Relations Coordinator of the NSS International Committee, NSS Policy Committee member, and Board member of the Tucson L5 Space Society. David Dunlop, Director of Project Development for The Moon Society. Brad R. Blair, General Partner with NewSpace Analytics LLC, professional consultant on advanced mining technology, the economic use of space mineral resources, and the analysis and modeling of emerging space market opportunities. “Are solar power satellites sitting ducks for orbital debris?” The Space Review, 9/22/14, Accessed 8/6/19 ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Precious targets in the sky The risk to present assets Orbital debris, by threatening our satellites and related spacecraft, is also threatening to shred the very fabric of modern life. Satellites are intimately involved with our everyday activities. Anyone using Google maps, checking the weather forecast, watching TV, listening to the radio, flying on a plane, using an ATM while traveling, accessing certain Internet sites, taking a cruise, or calling on a cell phone makes use of satellite technology. The risk to future developments Worse yet, future space technologies and missions are threatened. For example, Solar Power Satellites (SPS) for terrestrial use, an energy technology with enormous potential to improve lives, is also at stake. In 2009, retired astrophysicist Donald Kessler, who started NASA’s work on orbital debris more than 30 years ago, stated, “large structures such as those considered… for building solar power stations in Earth orbit could set up a situation where a single satellite failure could lead to cascading failures of many satellites.”9 Solar power satellites are not the only future spacecraft that will be threatened. Bigelow Aerospace plans to have its BA 330 habitats serve as crew habitats in orbit starting as early as 2016.10 Add to this the untold satellites and other spacecraft scheduled to go into Earth orbits well into the future.Fossil Fuel Lobby---1NCBig Oil blocks the aff Moran 14 (Sarah Moran, Environmental Leadership Action, and Ethics “Can Space-Based Solar Power Get Off the Ground?” --- April 16, 2014 --- accessed 8/14/19 --- ) *edited for typo****NCC’19 Novice Packet****The price tag is not the only thing that would make governments and citizens alike balk, however. A SBSP project, even at the earliest estimates for initial launch in 2025, would take a decade to build. “It’s not a quick fix, and that’s what people want,” Kay points out. SBSP has huge promise, but it requires long-term planning that seems to be the anathema of a world obsessed with the immediate and instant. Today, that immediacy comes from fossil fuels’ effective monopoly on energy resources. Coal and oil have dominated the energy landscape for a hundred and fifty years since the Industrial Revolution. As such, the infrastructure and systems are already in place supplying us with a constant stream of power produced by burning oil and [coal]*. Young clean energy technology like SBSP faces an uphill battle against the entrenched traditional energy suppliers. Today’s economy is dependent on these fossil fuels, with hugely wealthy and powerful groups – Big Oil companies (Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, and others) and lobbyists (Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute) – leading the conversation in regard to energy, keeping themselves at the forefront and pushing both alternative energies and the harmful effects of fossil fuels aside with nearly $400 million worth of political contributions during the second Bush era alone.? The fossil fuel industry employs thousands, and some might worry that these jobs will be lost in the changeover to alternative energies. To that, John Marston, Vice President for US Climate and Energy of the Environmental Defense Fund, writing in an op-ed in Forbes this week, says, “What’s different now, however, is that the evidence against them is so convincing that voters, energy customers, and most everyone else recognize that opposition to renewable energy is based on lost corporate profits. Cries of ‘higher energy costs’ and ‘lost jobs’ are no longer credible arguments against the clean energy revolution.”No Coop / China Says NoGeneric---1NCNo SSP coop – countries don’t want to risk national security or energy dependenceMacauley 7 [Molly Macauley was an economist specializing in satellites, and Vice President for Research and a Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on the economics of natural resources. Jhih-Shyang Shih is a Fellow at Resources for the Future. “Satellite solar power: Renewed interest in an age of climate change?” Space Policy, 4/10/07, Accessed via GMU 8/23/19 ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****However, the contribution will also depend on other factors, such as who owns SSP assets [13]. In fact, given the massive scale of an SSP system, its ownership and financing may well involve a consortium of governments or power companies representing a large number of countries. But in configuring such an institution, national security concerns may loom large—countries may not be willing to depend on international consortia for power supply. Since we see strong arguments for security-related concerns both among conventional and SSP technologies, we do not model these in this paper. More detailed discussion of these, including hypothetical financing and ownership designs for SSP, is a topic for future research.China Lead Now---1NCChina lead now is a neg argument – they have a ton of domestic incentives to be first in SBSP deployment, and zero reasons to share glory with the lagging US – they’ll say NOKwong 19 [Ray Kwong is an aerospace consultant, a commentator on U.S.-China relations, and a barstool analyst of climate, energy, food, and water security. “China Is Winning the Solar Space Race,” Foreign Policy, 6/16/19, Accessed 8/20/19 ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Today, if reports are accurate, China is at the forefront of the technology, which is basically solar power as you know it, except on steroids: It can collect energy 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. And instead of taking up millions of acres of land on the ground, space solar farms would be located in geosynchronous orbit, about 22,000 miles above sea level—far above pesky things like clouds, rain, and the cycle of day and night that make peak terrestrial solar power so intermittent. China plans on putting a commercial-scale solar power station in orbit by 2050, an accomplishment that would give it bragging rights as the first nation to harness the sun’s energy in space and beam power down to Earth. And that’s where things start to get prickly. First, China’s space program is part and parcel of China’s military program, according to a recent report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. This means that the army oversees China’s space activities, with “most of China’s ostensibly civilian space activities [having] dual-use applications.” Second, China’s space ambitions are all about the money—and an integral part of the country’s national economic rejuvenation and development goals. So if the space-based solar power demonstrator the Chinese Communist Party plans to have online as soon as next year is successful, more countries could potentially be enticed into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign-policy venture, the Belt and Road Initiative. This cheap, emissions-free power would be hard for many countries to turn down and would dramatically deepen China’s political leverage—if not give Beijing de facto control of countries that buy it—advancing China’s goal of creating the world’s first global electrical grid. Meanwhile, the United States has been sitting on space-based solar power technology since 1968, when NASA advisor and Apollo 11 project manager Peter Glaser published his concept of a solar power satellite as a means of harnessing solar energy for transmission to Earth in the journal Science. To top that off, Isaac Asimov, one of the most celebrated and prolific science fiction writers of all time, had predicted the idea in 1941, writing about a space station transmitting energy collected from the sun to planets here and there using microwave beams. In 1983, Asimov wrote again about solar power stations, predicting that they would be up and running, oops, by 2019. It’s not like NASA hasn’t tried to get the space-based solar power ball rolling, providing various presidential administrations with development and evaluation reports and feasibility studies, and even suggesting it as the primary power source for a first-generation, continuously occupied lunar base. “One of the most significant challenges to the implementation of a continuously manned lunar base is power,” researchers wrote in the latter report. “Using an orbiting space based solar power station to generate electrical power and beam it to a base sited anywhere on the moon should therefore be considered. The technology to collect sunlight, generate greater than the estimated 35 kilowatts of [continuous] power [required for the lunar base], and beam it to the surface using microwaves is available today.” Still, for a variety of reasons—most, if not all, having to do with a lack of money—there are no active space-based solar power missions on NASA’s books, much to the consternation of hundreds, if not thousands, of NASA engineers and scientists past and present who see space-based solar power as the project of their dreams.China Lead Now---2NCChina wants to expand geopolitical control through SSP – ask yourself why they would willingly give up critical leverage ?Davis 19 [Malcolm Davis is a senior analyst at ASPI. “Space-based solar power and 21st-century geopolitical competition,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 4/2/19, Accessed 8/20/19 ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****China’s interest in pursuing SSPS has some significant geopolitical implications for 21st-century energy competition. Fundamentally, the country that achieves a viable SSPS network first can potentially reshape global energy markets and, in turn, have much greater control over economic activity on earth from space. I’ve noted previously that China has been promoting a ‘space Silk Road’ via its Beidou global navigation system to states that have signed up to its Belt and Road Initiative. That campaign appears to be designed to deepen those states’ dependency on China as a provider of information infrastructure provider. Adding an energy dimension would dramatically deepen Chinese control of any recipient society. China’s SSPS would be promoted as contributing towards interdependent co-development—the ‘win–win’ rhetoric of China’s foreign ministry—as well as easing dependency on fossil fuels that contribute to climate change. However, there’s no disguising the fact that it would be China that provides the energy to keep recipient states prosperous. That implies serious political leverage. A Chinese SSPS network would also need large rectenna farms at key locations to receive the beamed energy from orbit and then distribute it to local grids. Such facilities would clearly be critical infrastructure, constructed and operated by China within recipient states. That would further deepen Chinese investment and influence in BRI states.Trade War---1NCTrade war destroys any chance at energy coopStromsta 19 [Karl-Erik Stromsta, Managing Editor at Green Tech Media. “Global Energy Transition at Risk From US-China Trade War,” GTM, 8/2/19, Accessed 8/19/19 ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Rising economic nationalism in the U.S. and China is dominating news headlines and making waves across the global economy. Less appreciated is the threat it poses to the energy transition. Already a dim prospect, the odds of keeping global warming to 2 degrees Celsius are getting darker as a result of the deepening trade war, according to Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. The consultancy's latest Energy Transition Outlook (ETO) holds to 3 degrees Celsius of global warming as its baseline outcome. Rapid and transformational change is in store for the global energy system over the next two decades, particularly in the electricity sector. But with 2 billion people lacking reliable electricity access, and the population still growing, total energy demand will continue rising to at least 2040, WoodMac expects. Global emissions look set to plateau — though not yet fall — in the 2030s. The ETO stands behind its previous prediction of a peak in oil demand in 2036, despite growth in the electric vehicle market. Among various factors that could put the brakes on a warming planet, few are as critical as a cooperative relationship between the U.S. and China, said David Brown, Wood Mackenzie’s head of markets and transitions for the Americas. On that front, however, things have not been going well. At the time the Paris Agreement was negotiated in 2015, there was a feeling of momentum toward global cooperation on climate change. “There were certainly still hurdles, but everyone had the sense that the two largest emitters would fight through some of those roadblocks, do more on sharing ideas on how to decarbonize, and potentially support investments in lower-carbon fuels,” Brown said in an interview. “The cooperation sentiment has really eased off as a result of the trade war," he added, with the U.S. and China now "deprioritizing decarbonization" at the strategic level. A taxing war For the energy transition, the risk from the trade war comes on several fronts. First is the negative impact on global economic growth, which in turn makes it more difficult for political leaders to push aggressive decarbonization agendas. Despite a booming stock market, the U.S. Federal Reserve this week lowered interest rates for the first time since the Great Recession. China’s economic growth has slowed to a multi-decade low, and both countries increasingly appear to be digging in for a protracted trade war. “The major priority in China is continued economic growth and stability,” Brown said. “If the trade war continues, and it drags on economic growth, it could impact their decision making.” Meanwhile, the rise of protectionism, exemplified by the Trump administration’s “America First” approach to foreign policy, is making lower-carbon options more difficult or expensive for some countries. On the renewables front, the U.S. has imposed tariffs on most types of imported solar modules, and newly proposed tariffs on wind turbine towers could undermine project economics just as the wind market enters what is expected to be a historic boom period. By the end of 2019, WoodMac expects the overall U.S. tariff rate to be near 4 percent, a level not seen since the mid-1980s. Meanwhile, China is showing less interest in buying U.S. liquefied natural gas exports to meet demand in its power-hungry eastern provinces on a lower-carbon basis. “China is one of the world’s largest hydrocarbon producers,” Brown said. “It has some of the world’s largest supplies of coal. They have that supply option — to switch back to coal — should they want to. Things that could spur that include less bilateral trade with other markets or weaker economic growth.”Trade War---2NCTrade war disincentivizes global environmental cooperation Sontakke 19 [Mayur Sontakke is a CFA charterholder and has been working with Market Realist since 2014. Over the years, Mayur has covered various industries and economies at Market Realist. “How a Trade War Will Affect Environmental Policies, Cooperation,” Market Realist, 5/17/19, Accessed 8/21/19 ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Trade war and policies The trade war could affect how the United States (SPY), China (FXI), and other countries approach their environment-related policies. How the world will tackle environmental issues collectively also depends on how long the trade war lasts. Fuel policies At over 250 billion tons, the United States has the biggest proven coal reserves in the world. With 147 billion tons of reserves, China ranks fourth in the world. The prolonged trade war between these two countries will most likely result in a global slowdown and job losses. Since coal was once a large employment generator (and still is, to some extent), politicians may make it a point to increase coal production to ramp up employment. China employed a whopping 5.2 million people in coal mining at its peak in December 2013. The United States employed 174,000 people in coal mining at its peak. Any increase in coal mining activity is negative for the environment. Both countries import oil and natural gas from other countries. While the United States has become a net exporter of natural gas thanks to the shale revolution, it still imports natural gas from Canada. During times of stress, governments might be tempted to tap into their coal reserves to keep their trade balances in check—again, a negative for the environment. Coal is a cheap source of energy for electricity generation. With solar panels becoming more expensive due to tariffs, coal (KOL) might be back in policymakers’ favor again. In fact, President Donald Trump is a proponent of coal. International policies With tariffs in place and protectionism rising around the world, the trade war could make it difficult for countries to build a consensus around international agreements such as the Paris Agreement, which President Trump has already exited. Other sectors Agriculture accounted for 9% of total greenhouse gas emissions in 2017. China has already put a 90% tariff on US agricultural imports in July 2018, substantially reducing US agricultural exports to China (ASHR). Since the United States (SPY) is a net agriculture exporter, a prolonged trade war could actually reduce greenhouse gas pollution from the US agriculture sector as trade slows. However, the overall drop in pollution won’t be substantial enough to offset the rises in pollution from other sectors. The residential and commercial sector might see a marginal drop in greenhouse gas emissions if the economy slows down. To sum it up The trade war may have a catastrophic impact on pollution caused by US sectors. The pollution from the transportation sector (IYT) may rise on the back of subdued oil prices if the trade war continues. Moreover, we may see a possible slowdown in the quest for energy efficiency among carmakers due to slowing exports and technology transfer friction. With solar (TAN) panels getting more expensive, the pace of renewable energy adoption in the United States could see a slowdown. Moreover, cheaper fossil fuels may hamper the country’s willingness to switch to cleaner energy sources. If President Donald Trump manages to bring manufacturing (XLI) back to the United States, it will add more pollution. International impact In a divided world, building a consensus on environment deals will be even more difficult as countries continue to focus on domestic economics rather than global sustainability. Overall, the trade war may make our planet more polluted. Are you ready for it?WarmingAlternatives---1NCSBSP investment trades off with more economically viable, terrestrial green energy solutionsSkarb 9 [Justin Skarb holds a BS in political science, a BA in history, a MA in political communication, and currently serves as an independent policy analyst. 4/27/09 “Space Based Solar Power: right here? Right now?” DOA: 8/19/19 – MB] *edited for typo****NCC’19 Novice Packet****The issue with investing in SBSP at the current juncture is not that it would not produce similar, if not greater, positive economic outcomes. Instead, the issue is that those positive economic results will not be felt for some time whereas investments into terrestrial green energy projects can be rolled out and started in short order with near-immediate economic benefits. By the NSSO’s own estimate, SBSP technology will not be mature enough to supply a mere 10 percent of America’s baseload power needs until 2050 (NSSO 2007, p. 9). Even though SBSP could end up producing enormous benefits for all of society in the decades to come, we can not allow the best to become the enemy of the good. The danger in making large investments into SBSP while the economy is reeling is that there is only so much money to go around. As such, there is a danger that scarce investment dollars will be siphoned [away]* from more immediately viable and beneficial programs such as terrestrial green energy programs. Some three decades ago the Department of Energy reported in its review of SBSP that “every dollar spent on solar satellites will not be spent on terrestrial research and commercialization”. Unfortunately, it is these very programs that may be critical to preventing a deepening of the current economic crisis. It would be nothing less than a tragedy of political judgment if the country was forced to forgo the near-term economic benefits of terrestrial green energy programs simply to fund a SBSP program that will not be viable for years, if not decades. Alternatives---2NCThere are tons of emerging clean energy alternativesPelton 17 [Joseph N. Pelton, Ph.D., is the former Dean and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the International Space University. He also is the Founder of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation and the founding President of the Society of Satellite Professionals International. “Solar Power Satellites and Space Mining,” The New Gold Rush, Ch. 5, Springer, Accessed via GMU 8/6/19 ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Then there is the issue of competitive clean energies that do not involve space travel and which seem to be developing on many fronts. The new and emerging options seem almost limitless. There are wind farms, solar cell systems on the ground on homes and buildings, geothermal energy, ocean thermal energy conversion, ocean current turbines, compact nuclear fusion, Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reaction (CANR), Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR), energy from silanes and hydrosilicons and so on. Some of these sources, such as geothermal and ocean current turbines—just like solar power satellites—can produce energy on a 24/7 basis. There has yet to be a definitive case made that solar power satellites can, on a long terms basis, provide reliable and cost competitive services that are economically superior to these other alternative energy sources. If the price of hydrocarbon fuels rises substantially, the performance of solar cells improve significantly, and/or the lifetime of these SPS facilities increase substantially the cost equations change. In the next two decades the cost equations will change and perhaps substantially so.SBSP is not a panacea – investment in other alternatives is needed for large-scale changeMoran 14 [Sarah Moran, Barnard College, former undergraduate researcher in astronomy for the University of Utah College of Science. “Can Space-Based Solar Power Get Off the Ground?” Environmental Leadership, Action, and Ethics, 4/16/14, Accessed 8/20/19 ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Space-based solar power, for all its promise, is also not the only answer. There is no end-all, be-all solution to our energy crisis. Wind, hydro, geothermal, terrestrial solar, and other alternatives all have the capacity to provide clean, efficient energy and to help remake the energy market. Implemented together, these new sources of power can diversify and strengthen the energy economy, while at the same time saving the Earth, our home, from the disastrous effects of fossil-fuel induced climate change.Not Efficient---1NCBe very skeptical of their solvency claims – SBSP is a high-risk, extremely long-term strategy with no evidence it will be a viable energy solutionCaton 15 [Jeffrey L. Caton is President of Kepler Strategies, a veteran-owned small business specializing in national security, cyberspace theory, and aerospace technology. He is also an Intermittent Professor of Program Management with Defense Acquisition University. “SPACE-BASED SOLAR POWER: A TECHNICAL, ECONOMIC, AND OPERATIONAL ASSESSMENT,” Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press, April 2015, Accessed 8/19/19 ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****CONCLUDING REMARKS Energy security is an issue that continues to become more acute as global populations grow and limited fossil fuel reserves shrink. The promises of space-based solar power for clean and unlimited energy for all humankind are certainly appealing. But the reality is that such systems always seem to be seen as just 10 years away by their advocates. While significant progress continues in the enabling technologies that will make SBSP systems economically viable and competitive power generators, there is no compelling evidence that such systems will provide the best energy solution. Considering the austerity of current federal budgets, the Army’s evolutionary approach to incorporating a diverse portfolio of renewable energy sources in distributed locations seems more prudent than placing significant amounts of resources in high-risk ventures such as SBSP systems. Perhaps in a decade or so, there will be technological breakthroughs that will fully support practical SBSP systems. But it is also possible that within that decade there may be breakthroughs such as fusion energy exploitation, which will make SBSP systems obsolete before they are even fielded.Not Efficient---2NCWeather issues and conversion inefficiencies take a huge toll on final energy outputMurphy 12 [Tom Murphy is an associate professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. “Space-Based Solar Power,” Do the Math, 3/20/12, Accessed 8/19/19 ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Power Transmission Now here’s the tricky part. Getting the power back to the ground is non-trivial. We are accustomed to using copper wire for power transmission. For the space-Earth interconnect, we must resort to electromagnetic means. Most discussions of electromagnetic power transmission centers on lasers or microwaves. I’ll immediately dismiss lasers as impractical for this purpose, because clouds block transmission, because converting the power into electricity is not as direct/efficient as it can be for microwaves, and because generation of laser power tends to be inefficient (my laser pointer is about 2%, for instance, though one can do far better). So let’s go microwave! For reasons that will become clear later, we want the highest frequency (shortest wavelength) we can get without losing too much in the atmosphere. Below is a plot generated from an interactive tool associated with the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (where I had my first Mauna Kea observing experience). This plot corresponds to a dry sky with only 2.0 mm of precipitable water vapor. Even so, water takes its toll, absorbing/scattering the high-frequency radiation so that the fraction transmitted through the atmosphere is tiny. Only at frequencies of 100 GHz and below does the atmosphere become nearly transparent. But if we have 25 mm of precipitable water (and thick clouds have far more than this), we get the following picture, which is already down to 75% transmission at 100 GHz. Our system is not entirely immune to clouds and weather. But we will go with 100 GHz and see what this gets us. Note that even though microwave ovens use a much lower frequency of 2.45 GHz (λ = 122 mm), the same dielectric heating mechanism operates at 100 GHz (peaking around 10 GHz). In order to evade both water absorption and dielectric heating, we would have to drop the frequency to the radio regime. At 100 GHz, the wavelength is about λ ≈ 3 mm. In order to transmit a microwave beam to the ground, one must contend with the diffractive nature of electromagnetic radiation. If we formed a perfectly collimated (parallel) beam of microwave energy from a dish in space with diameter Ds—where the ‘s’ subscript represents the space segment—we might naively anticipate the perfectly-formed beam to arrive at Earth still fitting in a tidy diameter Ds. But no. Diffraction imposes an angular spread of about λ/Ds radians, so that the beam spreads to a diameter at the ground, Dg ≈ rλ/Ds, where r is the distance between transmitter and receiver (about 36,000 km in our case). We can rearrange this to say that the product of the diameters of the transmitter and receiver dishes must approximately equal the product of the propagation distance and the wavelength: DsDg ≈ rλ So? Well, let’s first say that Ds and Dg are the same. In this case, we would require the diameter of each dish to be 330 m. These are gigantic, especially in space. Note also that really we need Dg = Ds + rλ/Ds to account for the original extent of the beam before diffraction spreads it further. So really, the one on Earth would be 660 m across. Launching a microwave dish this large should strike anyone as prohibitively difficult, so let’s scale back to a more imaginable Ds = 30 m (still quite impressive), in which case our ground-based receiver must be 3.6 km in diameter! Now you can see why I wanted to keep the frequency high, rather than dipping into the radio, where dishes would need only get bigger in proportion to the wavelength. Converting Back to Electrical Power At microwave frequencies, it is straightforward to directly rectify the oscillating electric field into direct current at something like 85% efficiency. The generation of beamed microwave energy in space, the capture of the energy at the ground, then conversion to electrical current all take their toll, so that the end-to-end process may be expected to have something in the neighborhood of 50% efficiency.No Impact---1NCNo warming extinction – cant solve, adaptation checks and it is locked inSebastian Farquhar 17 is a contributor at the Global Priorities Project, “Existential Risk Diplomacy and Governance”, Feb 3rd, , DOA 5-28-18-HA****NCC’19 Novice Packet****The most likely levels of global warming are very unlikely to cause human extinction. The existential risks of climate change instead stem from tail risk climate change – the low probability of extreme levels of warming – and interaction with other sources of risk. It is impossible to say with confidence at what point global warming would become severe enough to pose an existential threat. Research has suggested that warming of 11-12°C would render most of the planet uninhabitable and would completely devastate agriculture. This would pose an extreme threat to human civilisation as we know it. Warming of around 7°C or more could potentially produce conflict and instability on such a scale that the indirect effects could be an existential risk, although it is extremely uncertain how likely such scenarios are. Moreover, the timescales over which such changes might happen could mean that humanity is able to adapt enough to avoid extinction in even very extreme scenarios. The probability of these levels of warming depends on eventual greenhouse gas concentrations. According to some experts, unless strong action is taken soon by major emitters, it is likely that we will pursue a medium-high emissions pathway. If we do, the chance of extreme warming is highly uncertain but appears non-negligible. Current concentrations of greenhouse gases are higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years,21 which means that there are significant unknown unknowns about how the climate system will respond. Particularly concerning is the risk of positive feedback loops, such as the release of vast amounts of methane from melting of the arctic permafrost, which would cause rapid and disastrous warming.22 The economists Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman have used IPCC figures (which do not include modelling of feedback loops such as those from melting permafrost) to estimate that if we continue to pursue a medium-high emissions pathway, the probability of eventual warming of 6°C is around 10% and of 10°C is around 3%. These estimates are of course highly uncertain. It is likely that the world will take action against climate change once it begins to impose large costs on human society, long before there is warming of 10°C. Unfortunately, there is significant inertia in the climate system: there is a 25 to 50 year lag between CO2 emissions and eventual warming, and it is expected that 40% of the peak concentration of CO2 will remain in the atmosphere 1,000 years after the peak is reached. Consequently, it is impossible to reduce temperatures quickly by reducing CO2 emissions. If the world does start to face costly warming, the international community will therefore face strong incentives to find other ways to reduce global temperatures. No Impact---2NCNo existential warmingIBD, 18, Investor’s Business Daily, citing study by Judith Curry, an American climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, “Here's One Global Warming Study Nobody Wants You To See”, April 25th, , DOA 5-28-18-HA****NCC’19 Novice Packet****A new study published in a peer-reviewed journal finds that climate models exaggerate the global warming from CO2 emissions by as much as 45%. If these findings hold true, it's huge news. No wonder the mainstream press is ignoring it. In the study, authors Nic Lewis and Judith Curry looked at actual temperature records and compared them with climate change computer models. What they found is that the planet has shown itself to be far less sensitive to increases in CO2 than the climate models say. As a result, they say, the planet will warm less than the models predict, even if we continue pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. As Lewis explains: "Our results imply that, for any future emissions scenario, future warming is likely to be substantially lower than the central computer model-simulated level projected by the (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and highly unlikely to exceed that level. How much lower? Lewis and Curry say that their findings show temperature increases will be 30%-45% lower than the climate models say. If they are right, then there's little to worry about, even if we don't drastically reduce CO2 emissions. The planet will warm from human activity, but not nearly enough to cause the sort of end-of-the-world calamities we keep hearing about. In fact, the resulting warming would be below the target set at the Paris agreement. This would be tremendously good news. The fact that the Lewis and Curry study appears in the peer-reviewed American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate lends credibility to their findings. This is the same journal, after all, that recently published widely covered studies saying the Sahara has been growing and the climate boundary in central U.S. has shifted 140 miles to the east because of global warming. The Lewis and Curry findings come after another study, published in the prestigious journal Nature, that found the long-held view that a doubling of CO2 would boost global temperatures as much as 4.5 degrees Celsius was wrong. The most temperatures would likely climb is 3.4 degrees. It also follows a study published in Science, which found that rocks contain vast amounts of nitrogen that plants could use to grow and absorb more CO2, potentially offsetting at least some of the effects of CO2 emissions and reducing future temperature increases.Adaptation Solves---2NCAdaptation and resilience solve warming – no impactHart 15 (Michael, he’s the Simon Reisman chair at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, former Fulbright-Woodrow Wilson Center Visiting Research, he was also a Scholar-in-Residence in the School of International Service and a Senior Fellow in the Center for North American Studies at American University in Washington, a former official in Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, where he specialized in trade policy and trade negotiations, MA from the University of Toronto and is the author, editor, or co-editor of more than a dozen books, “Hubris: The Troubling Science, Economics, and Politics of Climate Change”, google books) ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****As already noted, the IPCC scenarios themselves are wildly alarmist, not only on the basic science but also on the underlying economic assumptions, which in turn drive the alarmist impacts. The result cannot withstand critical analysis. Economists Ian Castles and David Henderson, for example, show the extent to which the analysis is driven by the desire to reach predetermined outcomes.50 Other economists have similarly wondered what purpose was served by pursuing such unrealistic scenarios. It is hard to credit the defense put forward by Mike Hulme, one of the creators of the scenarios, that the IPCC is not engaged in forecasting the future but in creating “plausible” story lines of what might happen under various scenarios.51 Each scare scenario is based on linear projections without any reference to technological developments or adaptation. If, on a similar linear basis, our Victorian ancestors in the UK, worried about rapid urbanization and population growth in London, had made similar projections, they would have pointed to the looming crisis arising from reliance on horse-drawn carriages and omnibuses; they would have concluded that by the middle of the 20th century, London would be knee-deep in horse manure, and all of the southern counties would be required to grow the oats and hay to feed and bed the required number of horses. Technology progressed and London adapted. Why should the rest of humanity not be able to do likewise in the face of a trivial rise in temperature over the course of more than a century? The work on physical impacts is equally over the top. All the scenarios assume only negative impacts, ignore the reality of adaptation, and attribute any and all things bad to global warming. Assuming the GHG theory to be correct means that its impact would be most evident at night and during the winter in reducing atmospheric heat loss to outer space.52 It would have greater impact in increasing minimum temperatures than in increasing maximum temperatures. Secondary studies, however, generally ignore this facet of the hypothesis. The IPCC believes that a warmer world will harm human health due, for example, to increased disease, malnutrition, heat-waves, floods, storms, and cardiovascular incidents. As already noted there is no basis for the claim about severe-weather-related threats or malnutrition. The claim about heat-related deaths gained a boost during the summer of 2003 because of the tragedy of some 15,000 alleged heat-related deaths in France as elderly people stayed behind in city apartments without air conditioning while their children enjoyed the heat at the sea shore during the August vacation. Epidemiological studies of so-called "excess" deaths resulting from heat waves are abused to get the desired results. Similar studies of the impact of cold spells show that they are far more lethal than heat waves and that it is much easier to adapt to heat than to cold.53 More fundamentally, this, like most of the alarmist literature, ignores the basics of the AGW hypothesis: the world will not see an exponential increase in summer, daytime heat (and thus more heat waves), but a decrease in night-time and winter cooling, particularly at higher latitudes and altitudes. Based on the AGW hypothesis, Canada, China, Korea, Northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, and Argentina will see warmer winters and warmer nights. There are clear benefits to such a development, even if there may also be problems, but the AGW industry tends to ignore the positive aspects of their alarmist scenarios. The feared spread of malaria, a much repeated claim, is largely unrelated to climate. Malaria’s worst recorded outbreak was in Siberia long before there was any discussion of AGW. Similarly, the building of the Rideau Canal in Ottawa in the 1820s was severely hampered by outbreaks of malaria due to the proximity of mosquito-infested wetlands in the area. Malaria remains widespread in tropical countries today in part because of the UN’s lengthy embargo on the use of DDT, the legacy of an earlier alarmist disaster. Temperature is but one factor, and a minor one at that, in the multiple factors that affect the rise or decline in the presence of disease-spreading mosquitoes. Wealthier western countries have pursued public health strategies that have reduced the incidence of the dis- ease in their countries. Entomologist Paul Reiter, widely recognized as the leading specialist on malaria vectors and a contributor to some of the early work of the IPCC, was aghast to learn how his careful and systematic analysis of the potential impacts had been twisted in ways that he could not endorse. In a recent paper, he concludes: “Simplistic reasoning on the future prevalence of malaria is ill-founded; malaria is not limited by climate in most temperate regions, nor in the tropics, and in nearly all cases, ’new' malaria at high altitudes is well below the maximum altitudinal limits for transmission. Future changes in climate may alter the prevalence and incidence of the disease, but obsessive emphasis on ’global warming' as a dominant parameter is indefensible; the principal determinants are linked to ecological and societal change, politics and economics.”54 Catastrophic species loss similarly has little foundation in past experience.55 Even if the GHG hypothesis were to be correct, its impact would be slow, providing significant scope and opportunity for adaptation, including by ?ora and fauna. One of the more irresponsible claims was made by a group of UK modelers who fed wildly improbable scenarios and data into their computers and produced the much-touted claim of massive species loss by the end of the century. There are literally thousands of websites devoted to spreading alarm about species loss and biodiversity. Global warming is but one of many claimed human threats to the planet’s biodiversity. The claims, fortunately, are largely hype, based on computer models and the estimate by Harvard naturalist Edward O. Wilson that 27,000 to 100,000 species are lost annually - a figure he advanced purely hypothetically but which has become one of the most persistent of environmental urban myths. The fact is that scientists have no idea of the extent of the world's ?ora and fauna, with estimates ranging from five million to 100 million species, and that there are no reliable data about the rate of loss. By some estimates, 95 per cent of the species that ever existed have been lost over the eons, most before humans became major players in altering their environment. A much more credible estimate of recent species loss comes from a surprising source, the UN Environmental Program. It reports that known species loss is slowing reaching its lowest level in 500 years in the last three decades of the 20th century, with some 20 reported extinctions despite increasing pressure on the biosphere from growing human population and industrialization.57 The alarmist community has also introduced the scientifically unknown concept of "locally extinct,” often meaning little more than that a species of plant or animal has responded to adverse conditions by moving to more hospitable circumstances, e.g., birds or butterflies becoming more numerous north of their range and disappearing at its extreme southern extent. Idso et al. conclude: “Many species have shown the ability to adapt rapidly to changes in climate. Claims that global warming threatens large numbers of species with extinction typically rest on a false definition of extinction (the loss of a particular population rather than en- tire species) and speculation rather than real-world evidence. The world’s species have proven very resilient, having survived past natural climate cycles that involved much greater warming and higher C02 concentrations than exist today or are likely to exist in the coming centuries?“Slow---1NCSquo is lukewarming—temperature increase is slowMichaels and Knappenberger, 15—director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society, was a contributing author and is a reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AND assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute (Patrick and Paul, “Climate Models and Climate Reality: A Closer Look at a Lukewarming World”, , ****NCC’19 Novice Packet**** The case for lukewarming — modest anthropogenic climate change in accordance with the lower end of expectations from mainstream science — is simple, straightforward, and compelling.It is readily demonstrated that the rate of warming that has taken place over the past several decades, both at the earth’s surface as well as is the lower levels of the earth’s atmosphere critical for the development of the world’s weather patterns, has been slower than what was anticipated by the large collection of the climate models — models developed specifically to simulate the behavior of the earth/atmosphere system under conditions of changing human inputs. Over some time periods, the observed rate of warming has been so slow as to have been completely unexpected by any of the climate models, a worrying indication that the current state-of-the-art climate models are not up to the task of simulating the actual behavior of the earth’s climate. If the known climate behavior cannot be well-captured by the models, no case can be made for the veracity of projections, from the same models, of the future evolution of our climate — the projections which underlie current climate/energy policy.Slow---2NCMeans the impact is centuries awayRidley, 15—Right Honourable Viscount, which is some weird British thing, he has a really long list of pretty unbiased qualifications, accomplished biological/environmental scientist and economist, professor, etc (Matt, “Climate Change Will Not Be Dangerous for a Long Time”, , ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****This “lukewarm” option has been boosted by recent climate research, and if it is right, current policies may do more harm than good. For example, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and other bodies agree that the rush to grow biofuels, justified as a decarbonization measure, has raised food prices and contributed to rainforest destruction. Since 2013 aid agencies such as the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank have restricted funding for building fossil-fuel plants in Asia and Africa; that has slowed progress in bringing electricity to the one billion people who live without it and the four million who die each year from the effects of cooking over wood fires.In 1990 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was predicting that if emissions rose in a “business as usual” way, which they have done, then global average temperature would rise at the rate of about 0.3 degree Celsius per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 to 0.5 degree C per decade). In the 25 years since, temperature has risen at about 0.1 to 0.2 degree C per decade, depending on whether surface or satellite data is used. The IPCC, in its most recent assessment report, lowered its near-term forecast for the global mean surface temperature over the period 2016 to 2035 to just 0.3 to 0.7 degree C above the 1986–2005 level. That is a warming of 0.1 to 0.2 degree C per decade, in all scenarios, including the high-emissions ones.At the same time, new studies of climate sensitivity—the amount of warming expected for a doubling of carbon dioxide levels from 0.03 to 0.06 percent in the atmosphere—have suggested that most models are too sensitive. The average sensitivity of the 108 model runs considered by the IPCC is 3.2 degrees C. As Pat Michaels, a climatologist and self-described global warming skeptic at the Cato Institute testified to Congress in July, certain studies of sensitivity published since 2011 find an average sensitivity of 2 degrees C.Such lower sensitivity does not contradict greenhouse-effect physics. The theory of dangerous climate change is based not just on carbon dioxide warming but on positive and negative feedback effects from water vapor and phenomena such as clouds and airborne aerosols from coal burning. Doubling carbon dioxide levels, alone, should produce just over 1 degree C of warming. These feedback effects have been poorly estimated, and almost certainly overestimated, in the models.The last IPCC report also included a table debunking many worries about “tipping points” to abrupt climate change. For example, it says a sudden methane release from the ocean, or a slowdown of the Gulf Stream, are “very unlikely” and that a collapse of the West Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets during this century is “exceptionally unlikely.”If sensitivity is low and climate change continues at the same rate as it has over the past 50 years, then dangerous warming—usually defined as starting at 2 degrees C above preindustrial levels—is about a century away. So we do not need to rush into subsidizing inefficient and land-hungry technologies, such as wind and solar or risk depriving poor people access to the beneficial effects of cheap electricity via fossil fuels.FramingUtil---1NCEthical obligations are tautological- the only coherent rubric is to maximize lives Greene 10 Associate Professor of the Social Sciences Department of Psychology Harvard University, Joshua, Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings, “The Secret Joke of Kant’s Soul”, fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~lchang/material/Evolutionary/Developmental/Greene-KantSoul.pdf****NCC’19 Novice Packet****What turn-of-the-millennium science is telling us is that human moral judgment is not a pristine rational enterprise, that our moral judgments are driven by a hodgepodge of emotional dispositions, which themselves were shaped by a hodgepodge of evolutionary forces, both biological and cultural. Because of this, it is exceedingly unlikely that there is any rationally coherent normative moral theory that can accommodate our moral intuitions. Moreover, anyone who claims to have such a theory, or even part of one, almost certainly doesn't. Instead, what that person probably has is a moral rationalization. It seems then, that we have somehow crossed the infamous "is"-"ought" divide. How did this happen? Didn't Hume (Hume, 1978) and Moore (Moore, 1966) warn us against trying to derive an "ought" from and "is?" How did we go from descriptive scientific theories concerning moral psychology to skepticism about a whole class of normative moral theories? The answer is that we did not, as Hume and Moore anticipated, attempt to derive an "ought" from and "is." That is, our method has been inductive rather than deductive. We have inferred on the basis of the available evidence that the phenomenon of rationalist deontological philosophy is best explained as a rationalization of evolved emotional intuition (Harman, 1977). Missing the Deontological Point I suspect that rationalist deontologists will remain unmoved by the arguments presented here. Instead, I suspect, they will insist that I have simply misunderstood whatKant and like-minded deontologists are all about. Deontology, they will say, isn't about this intuition or that intuition. It's not defined by its normative differences with consequentialism. Rather, deontology is about taking humanity seriously. Above all else, it's about respect for persons. It's about treating others as fellow rational creatures rather than as mere objects, about acting for reasons rational beings can share. And so on (Korsgaard, 1996a; Korsgaard, 1996b).This is, no doubt, how many deontologists see deontology. But this insider's view, as I've suggested, may be misleading. The problem, more specifically, is that it defines deontology in terms of values that are not distinctively deontological, though they may appear to be from the inside. Consider the following analogy with religion. When one asks a religious person to explain the essence of his religion, one often gets an answer like this: "It's about love, really. It's about looking out for other people, looking beyond oneself. It's about community, being part of something larger than oneself." This sort of answer accurately captures the phenomenology of many people's religion, but it's nevertheless inadequate for distinguishing religion from other things. This is because many, if not most, non-religious people aspire to love deeply, look out for other people, avoid self-absorption, have a sense of a community, and be connected to things larger than themselves. In other words, secular humanists and atheists can assent to most of what many religious people think religion is all about. From a secular humanist's point of view, in contrast, what's distinctive about religion is its commitment to the existence of supernatural entities as well as formal religious institutions and doctrines. And they're right. These things really do distinguish religious from non-religious practices, though they may appear to be secondary to many people operating from within a religious point of view. In the same way, I believe that most of the standard deontological/Kantian self-characterizatons fail to distinguish deontology from other approaches to ethics. (See also Kagan (Kagan, 1997, pp. 70-78.) on the difficulty of defining deontology.) It seems to me that consequentialists, as much as anyone else, have respect for persons, are against treating people as mere objects, wish to act for reasons that rational creatures can share, etc. A consequentialist respects other persons, and refrains from treating them as mere objects, by counting every person's well-being in the decision-making process. Likewise, a consequentialist attempts to act according to reasons that rational creatures can share by acting according to principles that give equal weight to everyone's interests, i.e. that are impartial. This is not to say that consequentialists and deontologists don't differ. They do. It's just that the real differences may not be what deontologists often take them to be. What, then, distinguishes deontology from other kinds of moral thought? A good strategy for answering this question is to start with concrete disagreements between deontologists and others (such as consequentialists) and then work backward in search of deeper principles. This is what I've attempted to do with the trolley and footbridge cases, and other instances in which deontologists and consequentialists disagree. If you ask a deontologically-minded person why it's wrong to push someone in front of speeding trolley in order to save five others, you will getcharacteristically deontological answers. Some will be tautological: "Because it's murder!"Others will be more sophisticated: "The ends don't justify the means." "You have to respect people's rights." But, as we know, these answers don't really explain anything, because if you give the same people (on different occasions) the trolley case or the loop case (See above), they'll make the opposite judgment, even though their initial explanation concerning the footbridge case applies equally well to one or both of these cases. Talk about rights, respect for persons, and reasons we can share are natural attempts to explain, in "cognitive" terms, what we feel when we find ourselves having emotionally driven intuitions that are odds with the cold calculus of consequentialism. Although these explanations are inevitably incomplete, there seems to be "something deeply right" about them because they give voice to powerful moral emotions. But, as with many religious people's accounts of what's essential to religion, they don't really explain what's distinctive about the philosophy in question.Magnitude o/w Probability---1NCMagnitude o/w probability Bostrom 11 Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University of Oxford, recipient of the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the London School of Economics, 2011 “The Concept of Existential Risk,” Draft of a Paper published on , Available Online at ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Many kinds of cognitive bias and other psychological phenomena impede efforts at thinking clearly and dealing effectively with existential risk.[32] For example, use of the availability heuristic may create a “good-story bias” whereby people evaluate the plausibility of existential-risk scenarios on the basis of experience, or on how easily the various possibilities spring to mind. Since nobody has any real experience with existential catastrophe, expectations may be formed instead on the basis of fictional evidence derived from movies and novels. Such fictional exposures are systematically biased in favor of scenarios that make for entertaining stories. Plotlines may feature a small band of human protagonists successfully repelling an alien invasion or a robot army. A story in which humankind goes extinct suddenly—without warning and without being replaced by some other interesting beings—is less likely to succeed at the box office (although more likely to happen in reality).Magnitude o/w Probability---2NCReject their warming impact framing---it’s intrinsically less probabilistic. Murphy et al. 16—Robert P. Murphy a Research Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University and a Senior Economist at the Institute for Energy Research // Patrick J. Michaels Director of Cato’s Center for the Study of Science // Paul C. Knappenberger Assistant Director of Cato’s Center for the Study of Science [“The Case Against a U.S. Carbon Tax,” Policy Analysis at Cato, No. 801, ] ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****“Fat Tails” and Carbon Taxes as Insurance?As a postscript to those observations, we note that the leaders in the pro–carbon tax camp are abandoning traditional cost-benefit analysis, claiming its use is inappropriate in the context of climate change. One reason given for this is concern over “fat tails”—concern that climate change could result in damages far greater than what is currently considered likely. Worries about fat tails lead some carbon tax proponents, like Harvard economist Martin Weitzman, to argue that, instead of treating a carbon tax as a policy response to a given (and known) negative externality, it should be considered a form of insurance pertaining to a catastrophe that might happen but with unknown likelihood.31But that argument poses some serious problems. The most obvious is that the utility of such “insurance” is declining, given the emerging evidence that very large warming is unlikely. Beyond that, the whole purpose of the periodic IPCC reports was to produce a compilation of the consensus research to guide policymakers. But Weitzman and others argue that policymakers should be concerned about what we don’t know.32 That argument certainly has some merit, but, as economist David R. Henderson points out, broad-based uncertainty cuts both ways in the climate change policy debate. For example, it is possible that the Earth is headed into a period of prolonged cooling, in which case offsetting anthropogenic warming would be beneficial—meaning that a carbon tax would be undesirable.33 So why should one unlikely but troubling scenario shape our policy thinking but another unlikely but troubling scenario be ignored?Another problem with Weitzman’s approach—as Nordhaus, among other critics, has pointed out34—is that it could be used to justify aggressive and costly policies against several low-probability catastrophic risks, including asteroid strikes, rogue artificial intelligence developments, and bioweapons. After all, we can’t rule out humanity’s destruction from a genetically engineered virus in the year 2100, and what’s worse we are not even sure how to construct the probability distribution on such events. Yet few people would argue that we should forfeit 5 percent of global output to reduce the likelihood of one of the latter improbable catastrophes. Why then do some people make that argument about climate change?That question leads to another problem with the insurance analogy. With actual insurance, the risks are well known and quantifiable, and competition among insurers provides rates that are reasonable for the damages involved. Furthermore, for all practical purposes, buying insurance eliminates the (financial) risk. Yet, to be analogous to the type of insurance that Weitzman and others are advocating, a homeowner would be told that a roving gang of arsonists might, decades from now, set his home on fire, that a fire policy would cost 5 percent of income every year until then, and that, even if the house were struck by the arsonists, the company would indemnify the owner for only some of the damages. Who would buy such an insurance policy?Nuclear War Extinction---1NCNuke war causes extinctionStarr, 17(Steven, 1/9/2017. Director, University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program; senior scientist, Physicians for Social Responsibility. “Turning a Blind Eye Towards Armageddon — U.S. Leaders Reject Nuclear Winter Studies.” Federation of American Scientists. )****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Now 10 years ago, several of the world’s leading climatologists and physicists chose to reinvestigate the long-term environmental impacts of nuclear war. The peer-reviewed studies they produced are considered to be the most authoritative type of scientific research, which is subjected to criticism by the international scientific community before final publication in scholarly journals. No serious errors were found in these studies and their findings remain unchallenged. Alan Robock et al., “Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences,” Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 112 (2007). Owen Brian Toon et al., “Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts and acts of individual nuclear terrorism,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 7 (2007). Michael Mills et al., “Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, no. 14 (2008). Michael Mills et al., “Multidecadal global cooling and unprecedented ozone loss following a regional nuclear conflict,” Earth’s Future 2. Alan Robock et al., “Climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflicts,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 7 (2007). Working at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado-Boulder, the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers, and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA, these scientists used state-of-the-art computer modeling to evaluate the consequences of a range of possible nuclear conflicts. They began with a hypothetical war in Southeast Asia, in which a total of 100 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs were detonated in the cities of India and Pakistan. Please consider the following images of Hiroshima, before and after the detonation of the atomic bomb, which had an explosive power of 15,000 tons of TNT. The detonation of an atomic bomb with this explosive power will instantly ignite fires over a surface area of three to five square miles. In the recent studies, the scientists calculated that the blast, fire, and radiation from a war fought with 100 atomic bombs could produce direct fatalities comparable to all of those worldwide in World War II, or to those once estimated for a “counterforce” nuclear war between the superpowers. However, the long-term environmental effects of the war could significantly disrupt the global weather for at least a decade, which would likely result in a vast global famine. The scientists predicted that nuclear firestorms in the burning cities would cause at least five million tons of black carbon smoke to quickly rise above cloud level into the stratosphere, where it could not be rained out. The smoke would circle the Earth in less than two weeks and would form a global stratospheric smoke layer that would remain for more than a decade. The smoke would absorb warming sunlight, which would heat the smoke to temperatures near the boiling point of water, producing ozone losses of 20 to 50 percent over populated areas. This would almost double the amount of UV-B reaching the most populated regions of the mid-latitudes, and it would create UV-B indices unprecedented in human history. In North America and Central Europe, the time required to get a painful sunburn at mid-day in June could decrease to as little as six minutes for fair-skinned individuals. As the smoke layer blocked warming sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface, it would produce the coldest average surface temperatures in the last 1,000 years. The scientists calculated that global food production would decrease by 20 to 40 percent during a five-year period following such a war. Medical experts have predicted that the shortening of growing seasons and corresponding decreases in agricultural production could cause up to two billion people to perish from famine. The climatologists also investigated the effects of a nuclear war fought with the vastly more powerful modern thermonuclear weapons possessed by the United States, Russia, China, France, and England. Some of the thermonuclear weapons constructed during the 1950s and 1960s were 1,000 times more powerful than an atomic bomb. During the last 30 years, the average size of thermonuclear or “strategic” nuclear weapons has decreased. Yet today, each of the approximately 3,540 strategic weapons deployed by the United States and Russia is seven to 80 times more powerful than the atomic bombs modeled in the India-Pakistan study. The smallest strategic nuclear weapon has an explosive power of 100,000 tons of TNT, compared to an atomic bomb with an average explosive power of 15,000 tons of TNT. Strategic nuclear weapons produce much larger nuclear firestorms than do atomic bombs. For example, a standard Russian 800-kiloton warhead, on an average day, will ignite fires covering a surface area of 90 to 152 square miles. A war fought with hundreds or thousands of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons would ignite immense nuclear firestorms covering land surface areas of many thousands or tens of thousands of square miles. The scientists calculated that these fires would produce up to 180 million tons of black carbon soot and smoke, which would form a dense, global stratospheric smoke layer. The smoke would remain in the stratosphere for 10 to 20 years, and it would block as much as 70 percent of sunlight from reaching the surface of the Northern Hemisphere and 35 percent from the Southern Hemisphere. So much sunlight would be blocked by the smoke that the noonday sun would resemble a full moon at midnight. Under such conditions, it would only require a matter of days or weeks for daily minimum temperatures to fall below freezing in the largest agricultural areas of the Northern Hemisphere, where freezing temperatures would occur every day for a period of between one to more than two years. Average surface temperatures would become colder than those experienced 18,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age, and the prolonged cold would cause average rainfall to decrease by up to 90%. Growing seasons would be completely eliminated for more than a decade; it would be too cold and dark to grow food crops, which would doom the majority of the human population.Nuclear War Extinction---2NCNuclear war causes extinction.-Immediate death-Climate destruction spurring an ice age (Nuclear winter) via nuclear firestorms and smoke-Ozone collapses-2 Billion insta-die in famine-Creams biodiversity -Meltdowns and grid collapse via EMPs-Remaining fallout Starr 14 {Steven, Senior Scientist for Physicians for Social Responsibility, Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program (Missouri), commentator in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Strategic Arms Reduction, Associate member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, “The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons: Nuclear War has No Winner,” Global Research: Centre for Research on Globalization, 6/5, }****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Nuclear war has no winner. Beginning in 2006, several of the world’s leading climatologists (at Rutgers, UCLA, John Hopkins University, and the University of Colorado-Boulder) published a series of studies that evaluated the long-term environmental consequences of a nuclear war, including baseline scenarios fought with merely 1% of the explosive power in the US and/or Russian launch-ready nuclear arsenals. They concluded that the consequences of even a “small” nuclear war would include catastrophic disruptions of global climate[i] and massive destruction of Earth’s protective ozone layer[ii]. These and more recent studies predict that global agriculture would be so negatively affected by such a war, a global famine would result, which would cause up to 2 billion people to starve to death. [iii]? These peer-reviewed studies – which were analyzed by the best scientists in the world and found to be without error – also predict that a war fought with less than half of US or Russian strategic nuclear weapons would destroy the human race.[iv] In other words, a US-Russian nuclear war would create such extreme long-term damage to the global environment that it would leave the Earth uninhabitable for humans and most animal forms of life.? A recent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Self-assured destruction: The climate impacts of nuclear war”,[v] begins by stating:? “A nuclear war between Russia and the United States, even after the arsenal reductions planned under New START, could produce a nuclear winter. Hence, an attack by either side could be suicidal, resulting in self-assured destruction.”? In 2009, I wrote an article[vi] for the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament that summarizes the findings of these studies. It explains that nuclear firestorms would produce millions of tons of smoke, which would rise above cloud level and form a global stratospheric smoke layer that would rapidly encircle the Earth. The smoke layer would remain for at least a decade, and it would act to destroy the protective ozone layer (vastly increasing the UV-B reaching Earth[vii]) as well as block warming sunlight, thus creating Ice Age weather conditions that would last 10 years or longer.? Following a US-Russian nuclear war, temperatures in the central US and Eurasia would fall below freezing every day for one to three years; the intense cold would completely eliminate growing seasons for a decade or longer. No crops could be grown, leading to a famine that would kill most humans and large animal populations.? Electromagnetic pulse from high-altitude nuclear detonations would destroy the integrated circuits in all modern electronic devices[viii], including those in commercial nuclear power plants. Every nuclear reactor would almost instantly meltdown; every nuclear spent fuel pool (which contain many times more radioactivity than found in the reactors) would boil-off, releasing vast amounts of long-lived radioactivity. The fallout would make most of the US and Europe uninhabitable. Of course, the survivors of the nuclear war would be starving to death anyway. Once nuclear weapons were introduced into a US-Russian conflict, there would be little chance that a nuclear holocaust could be avoided. Theories of “limited nuclear war” and “nuclear de-escalation” are unrealistic.[ix] In 2002 the Bush administration modified US strategic doctrine from a retaliatory role to permit preemptive nuclear attack; in 2010, the Obama administration made only incremental and miniscule changes to this doctrine, leaving it essentially unchanged. Furthermore, Counterforce doctrine – used by both the US and Russian military – emphasizes the need for preemptive strikes once nuclear war begins. Both sides would be under immense pressure to launch a preemptive nuclear first-strike once military hostilities had commenced, especially if nuclear weapons had already been used on the battlefield.War Turns Warming---1NCWar turns warmingROBOCK 15 , Alan, distinguished professor of climate science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, where he also directs the undergraduate meteorology program, [Interview by Elisabeth Eaves, contributing editor to BAS, “Cloud control: Climatologist Alan Robock on the effects of geoengineering and nuclear war,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 2015, Vol. 71, No. 3, p. 1-7] ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****BAS: Let’s move on to talking about nuclear winter. How small a nuclear weapons exchange would be necessary to cause a climatic effect? Robock: Well first of all I don’t like the jargon of “exchange.” It really sanitizes it. It sounds like you’re going to take a sweater you got for Christmas back to the store. Rather you could ask, “How much burning of people and villages and cities do we need?” The United States and Russia have enough nuclear weapons to produce nuclear winter. That is, the effects of smoke from burning cities and industrial areas could cause the temperature to go below freezing in the middle of the continents. We did a scenario in which we looked at 50 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs being dropped on India and 50 being dropped on Pakistan on the targets that would produce the largest amounts of smoke. That’s much less than one percent of the current global nuclear arsenal. We found that these 100 bombs would produce enough smoke to block out the sun and cause temperatures to fall lower than any temperature in recorded human history, colder than the Little Ice Age of several centuries ago which produced famines and revolutions. BAS: What else could result? Robock: China and the United States are the two biggest grain-growing regions in the world. Weather disruptions caused by that small nuclear war could cause production to go down by 10 to 40 percent for five years and 20 percent for ten years. This would be a huge hit to the world food supply. BAS: You recently wrote that nuclear weapons are a more serious threat than global warming. Why is that so? Robock: Because nuclear weapons produce climate change too, and the climate change caused by nuclear weapons could be much more devastating. It could have a much larger immediate impact on our food supply, producing social disruptions as well as famine.War Turns Warming---2NCNuke war outweighs climate change---causes extinction. Robock & Toon 14—Alan Robock a Professor of Climatology at Rutgers University // Brian Toon a Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UC Boulder [“Ban Nuclear Weapons; Saving Money and Saving the World,” Huffington Post, 20 Feb, ] ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Nuclear weapons are useless. They would never be used on purpose by the major powers, but could be used by accident. Some countries might use them in a moment of panic, or in response to imagined threats and insults, or in a fit of religious hysteria. The arsenals of nuclear weapons states set a bad example for the world, encouraging proliferation. And they could kill us all. The direct casualties from just three weapons of the size used on Hiroshima, exploding on U.S. cities, perhaps by North Korea or Iran in coming decades, would cause more casualties than the U.S. experienced in World War II. Even worse, our recent work shows that a nuclear war between any two countries each using only 50 Hiroshima-sized atom bombs, a modest fraction of what India and Pakistan now possess, could produce climate change unprecedented in recorded human history. Unfortunately, we have examples of cities burning, like San Francisco here after the 1906 earthquake. Nuclear winter was discovered 30 years ago by American and Russian scientists, including us, working together. We found that the stratospheric smoke originating from fires ignited by nuclear explosions in cities and industrial areas would be so dense that it would block out the Sun, making it cold, dark, and dry at Earth's surface, killing plants and preventing agriculture for at least a year. There would be winter conditions even in the summer. And our recent work using modern computers and simulation models not only has validated the early work, but shows that the smoke would last for more than a decade. The scary thing is that this could still happen today. Even the reduced arsenals that will remain in 2017 after the New START treaty, about 4,000 between the U.S. and Russia, threaten the world with nuclear winter. The world as we know it could end any day as a result of an accidental nuclear war between the United States and Russia. With temperatures plunging below freezing, crops would die and massive starvation could kill most of humanity. This is what the world would look like after a US-Russia nuclear war.Warming =/= Turn War---1NCWarming won’t cause conflictsAllouche 11 The sustainability and resilience of global water and food systems: Political analysis of the interplay between security, resource scarcity, political systems and global trade ☆ Jeremy Allouche Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK Available online 22 January 2011. ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****The debates over the likely impacts of climate change have again popularised the idea of water wars. The argument runs that climate change will precipitate worsening ecological conditions contributing to resource scarcities, social breakdown, institutional failure, mass migrations and in turn cause greater political instability and conflict ( [Brauch, 2002] and [Pervis and Busby, 2004]). In a report for the US Department of Defense, Schwartz and Randall (2003) speculate about the consequences of a worst-case climate change scenario arguing that watershortages will lead to aggressive wars (Schwartz and Randall, 2003, p. 15). Despite growing concern that climate change will lead to instability and violent conflict, the evidence base to substantiate the connections is thin ( [Barnett and Adger, 2007] and [Kevane and Gray, 2008]).Yes GPW---1NC‘No great power wars’ theory proven falseBell and Miller 2015 (Mark S. Bell and Nicholas L. Miller, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA 2 Watson Institute for International Studies and Department of Political Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA. Questioning the Effect of Nuclear Weapons on Conflict. Journal of Conflict Resolution 2015, Vol. 59(1) 74-92) ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****We examine the effect of nuclear weapons on interstate conflict. Using more appropriate methodologies than have previously been used, we find that dyads in which both states possess nuclear weapons are not significantly less likely to fight wars, nor are they significantly more or less belligerent at low levels of conflict. This stands in contrast to previous work, which suggests nuclear dyads are some 2.7 million times less likely to fight wars. We additionally find that dyads in which one state possesses nuclear weapons are more prone to low-level conflict (but not more prone to war). This appears to be because nuclear-armed states expand their interests after nuclear acquisition rather than because nuclear weapons provide a shield behind which states can aggress against more powerful conventional-armed states. This calls into question conventional wisdom on the impact of nuclear weapons and has policy implications for the impact of nuclear proliferation.Yes GPW---2NCBest studies prove great power status cannot be used as a predictive determinant of warBell and Miller 2015 (Mark S. Bell and Nicholas L. Miller, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA 2 Watson Institute for International Studies and Department of Political Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA. Questioning the Effect of Nuclear Weapons on Conflict. Journal of Conflict Resolution 2015, Vol. 59(1) 74-92) ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Our results call into question several aspects of the conventional wisdom on nuclear weapons and conflict. Using more appropriate methodological approaches than previous studies, we find that symmetric nuclear dyads are not less likely to fight wars, nor significantly more likely to engage in low-level conflict than nonnuclear dyads.This pattern holds up even when one examines individual dyads. Thus, for all its theoretical plausibility, this component of the stability–instability paradox appears to lack strong empirical support, as do the predictions of nuclear optimists and pessimists: the conflict behavior of symmetric nuclear dyads appears much the same as that of nonnuclear dyads. It is important to note, however, that we have only examined one of the predictions of the nuclear pessimists—that the spread of nuclear weapons increase conventional conflict post-nuclearization. We have not tested the view of the nuclear pessimists that nuclear proliferation may cause incentives for preventive war prior to nuclearization or raise the possibility of nuclear war or accidental nuclear use. With respect to asymmetric nuclear dyads, even after controlling for the factors that lead to proliferation, nuclear-armed states are more likely to initiate low-level conflict against nonnuclear states, but this effect is limited and conditional. Rather than aggressing against more conventionally powerful states, the evidence suggests that states possessing nuclear weapons tend to initiate disputes against new, weak adversaries.These findings have important policy implications. At least with regard to its consequences for conventional conflict, the findings suggest that nuclear proliferation is neither as menacing or stabilizing as many have believed. The pessimists’ prediction that nuclear weapons exacerbate international conflict after nuclear acquisition seems to lack support, except in the case of nuclear-armed states’ propensity to initiate disputes against new adversaries. Meanwhile, the optimists’ hope that nuclear weapons significantly reduce the likelihood of conflict also appears largely illusory. Nonetheless, contrary to Mueller (2010), our findings do not imply that policy makers should be unconcerned about nuclear proliferation. Even if nuclear dyads behave similarly to nonnuclear dyads, if the mere presence of nuclear weapons generates some non-zero probability of nuclear war, policy makers still have reason to worry about proliferation given the severe consequences of any nuclear use.23 Moreover, as noted above, we do find that nuclear states are more likely to initiate low-level conflicts against new nonnuclear opponents, suggesting that nuclear weapons may not be completely irrelevant, and may lead states to expand their interests in world politics. This suggests at least a note of caution for those who see little danger in future proliferation.War Turns S/V---1NCWar turns structural violenceBulloch 8 Millennium - Journal of International Studies May 2008 vol. 36 no. 3 575-595 Douglas Bulloch, IR Department, London School of Economics and Political Science, He is currently completing his PhD in International Relations at the London School of Economics, during which time he spent a year editing Millennium: Journal of International Studies ****NCC’19 Novice Packet**** But the idea that poverty and peace are directly related presupposes that wealth inequalities are – in and of themselves – unjust, and that the solution to the problem of war is to alleviate the injustice that inspires conflict, namely poverty. However, it also suggests that poverty is a legitimate inspiration for violence, otherwise there would be no reason to alleviate it in the interests of peace. It has become such a commonplace to suggest that poverty and conflict are linked that it rarely suffers any examination. To suggest that war causes poverty is to utter an obvious truth, but to suggest the opposite is – on reflection – quite hard to believe. War is an expensive business in the twenty-first century, even asymmetrically. And just to examine Bangladesh for a moment is enough at least to raise the question concerning the actual connection between peace and poverty. The government of Bangladesh is a threat only to itself, and despite 30 years of the Grameen Bank, Bangladesh remains in a state of incipient civil strife. So although Muhammad Yunus should be applauded for his work in demonstrating the efficacy of micro-credit strategies in a context of development, it is not at all clear that this has anything to do with resolving the social and political crisis in Bangladesh, nor is it clear that this has anything to do with resolving the problem of peace and war in our times. It does speak to the Western liberal mindset – as Geir Lundestad acknowledges – but then perhaps this exposes the extent to which the Peace Prize itself has simply become an award that reflects a degree of Western liberal wish-fulfilment. It is perhaps comforting to believe that poverty causes violence, as it serves to endorse a particular kind of concern for the developing world that in turn regards all problems as fundamentally economic rather than deeply – and potentially radically – political. War Turns S/V---2NCPreventing nuclear war is the prerequisite to solving systemic impactsFolk 78 Folk, Prof of Religious and Peace Studies at Bethany College, Jerry, “Peace Educations – Peace Studies: Towards an Integrated Approach,” Peace & Change, Vol. V, No. 1, spring, P. 58****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Those proponents of the positive peace approach who reject out of hand the work of researchers and educators coming to the field from the perspective of negative peace too easily forget that the prevention of a nuclear confrontation of global dimensions is the prerequisite for all other peace research, education, and action. Unless such a confrontation can be avoided there will be no world left in which to build positive peace. Moreover, the blanket condemnation of all such negative peace oriented research, education or action as a reactionary attempt to support and reinforce the status quo is doctrinaire. Conflict theory and resolution, disarmament studies, studies of the international system and of international organizations, and integration studies are in themselves neutral. They do not intrinsically support either the status quo or revolutionary efforts to change or overthrow it. Rather they offer a body of knowledge which can be used for either purpose or for some purpose in between. It is much more logical for those who understand peace as positive peace to integrate this knowledge into their own framework and to utilize it in achieving their own purposes. A balanced peace studies program should therefore offer the student exposure to the questions and concerns which occupy those who view the field essentially from the point of view of negative peace.S/V Doesn’t Escalate---1NCStructural violence doesn’t escalate – they essentialize degrees of violence, systems of violence are not causal to international warHinde and Pulkkinnen 1 Cambridge Psychology Professor and University of Jyv?skyl? Psychology Professor, 2001, ? (Robert and Lea, “Human Aggressiveness and War”, Pugwash, Vol. 2, No. 3, September, Pg. 5-6, PAS) 1-17-13 ****NCC’19 Novice Packet****People are capable of perpetrating the most terrible acts of violence on their? fellows. From before recorded history humans have killed humans, and violence? is potentially present in every society. There is no escaping the fact that the capacity to develop a propensity for violence is part of human nature. But that does? not mean that aggression is inevitable: temporary anger need not give rise to? persistent hostility, and hostility need not give rise to acts of aggression. And? people also have the capacity to care for the needs of others, and are capable? of acts of great altruism and self-sacrifice. A subsidiary aim of this paper is to? identify the factors that make aggressive tendencies predominate over the cooperative and compassionate ones. Some degree of conflict of interest is often present in relationships between individuals, in the relations between groups of individuals within states, and in the relations between states: we are concerned with? the factors that make such conflicts escalate into violence.? The answer to that question depends critically on the context. While there? may be some factors in common, the bases of individual aggressiveness are very? different from those involved in mob violence, and they differ yet again from? the factors influencing the bomb-aimer pressing the button in a large scale international war. In considering whether acts which harm others are a consequence? of the aggressive motivation of individuals, it is essential to recognize the diversity of such acts, which include interactions between individuals, violence? between groups, and wars of the WW2 type. We shall see that, with increasing social complexity, individual aggressiveness becomes progressively less important, but other aspects of human nature come to contribute to group phenomena. Although research on human violence has focussed too often on the importance of one factor or another, it is essential to remember that violence always? has multiple causes, and the interactions between the causal factors remain largely unexplored.S/V Doesn’t Escalate---2NCEveryday violence doesn’t cause war and genocide because of significant differences in the degree of intentionality Bradby & Hundt 10 Hannah Bradby, Co-Director of the Institute of Health at the University of Warwick, Lecturer in Sociology at Warwick Medical School, and Gillian Lewando Hundt, Professor of Social Sciences in Health at the University of Warwick, 2010, “Introduction,” in Global perspectives on war, gender and health: the sociology and anthropology of suffering, p. 5-6****NCC’19 Novice Packet****Far from being a uniquely horrific activity Scheper-Hughes (2002) views genocide as an extension of the dehumanising processes identifiable in many daily interactions. Drawing on analysis of the holocaust as the outcome of the general features of modernity, Scheper-Hughes posits a ‘genocidal continuum’ that connects daily, routine suffering and concomitant insults to a person’s humanity with genocide (Scheper-Hughes 2002: 371). The institutional ‘destruction of personhood’, as seen in the withdrawal of humane empathy from the poor or the elderly, creates the conditions which eventually make genocide possible. The argument that conditions of modernity including western rational legal metaphysics facilitate genocide has been criticised as too unifying and as conferring ‘super-eminence’ on the holocaust (Rose 1996: 11). The holocaust has become a crucial emblem through which we have sought to understand subsequent violence, wars and genocides. But the centrality of the holocaust in developing European thinking around conflict and suffering has made the resultant theoretical perspectives difficult to apply in non-European settings and in instances where conflict is less focussed around a clash of ideology. While the scale of the death toll of the holocaust should continue to shock, as should the organised nature of the attempted destruction of Jews, Roma, Gays and the disabled, there is very little to be gained in comparing scales or forms of suffering. It should be possible to use the study of the holocaust to inform understanding of other genocides in the context of other wars, to interrogate the link between war and suffering and to think through gendered perspectives without essentialising gender or making it the only explanatory variable. This collection does not primarily seek to add to the discussion of the role of the holocaust in theories of human suffering. Our chapters are, however, an unfortunate witness to the fact that despite contemporary hopes and the scale of combatant and non-combatants deaths, the two World Wars were not the wars to end all wars. Rather wars, and their associated suffering, have been ongoing ever since, both in Europe and beyond. War and Medicine While structural approaches can problematise a division between intentional and unintentional suffering, intentionality is nonetheless crucial to the contradictory relationship that war and medicine have with suffering. War is an organised conflict between two military groups and armed conflict is bound to be accompanied by suffering. Although ‘rules of engagement’ and the rhetoric of ‘targeted interventions’ deploying ‘surgical strikes’ suggest that ‘unnecessary’ blood shed can be avoided, war entails suffering, even if this is restricted to combatants. A limited, or targeted war is an oxymoron since war tends to be found in company with the other horsemen of the apocalypse, that is, pestilence, famine and death. Moreover, while the effect of war on soldiers is closely monitored by both sides, the disproportionate way in which the apocalyptic horsemen affect non-combatants and particularly those who are already disempowered such as women, the old and the young, has been less subject to scrutiny. ................
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